US Spreads Arms, Not Democracy

[Doug]

US Is Top Purveyor on Weapons Sales List
By Bryan Bender
The Boston Globe

Monday 13 November 2006

Shipments grow to unstable areas.
Washington - The United States last year provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, as major arms sales to the most unstable regions - many already engaged in conflict - grew to the highest level in eight years, new US government figures show.

According to the annual assessment, the United States supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 - 45.8 percent of the total and far more than second-ranked Russia with 15 percent and Britain with a little more than 13 percent.

Arms control specialists said the figures underscore how the largely unchecked arms trade to the developing world has become a major staple of the American weapons industry, even though introducing many of the weapons risks fueling conflicts rather than aiding long-term US interests.

The report was compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

"We are at a point in history where many of these sales are not essential for the self-defense of these countries and the arms being sold continue to fuel conflicts and tensions in unstable areas," said Daryl G. Kimball , executive director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association in Washington. "It doesn't make much sense over the long term."

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

We became the "arsenal for democracy" in 1940, but when democracy didn't need an arsenal any longer, our corporate weapons makers had to find clients somewhere. Post WWI Americans were more "moral" than their grandchildren and great grandchildren. It took DuPont almost 15 years of making nice "better things for better living through chemistry" to overcome the taint of war (they were munitions manufacturers in WWI) and get general folks to buy DuPont stock. The post WWII and post Vietnam folks invest in war profiteers as a matter of course - money talks, you know.

[Hogeye]

We know the government is responsible for creating the military industrial complex, and approves every sale of military armaments to foreign states; it would be interesting to know how much of the purchasing by "developing countries" are subsidized by the USEmpire.

It is worth noting that, while arms sales are encouraged and abetted by the USEmpire for crony rulers in places where arms are unneeded, they are generally denied to the "little guys" getting massacred, e.g. formerly in Rwanda and currently in Darfur. Jet bombers for rulers, but no M-16s for poor farmers.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The government doesn't necessarily approve all movement of arms - we have absent-mindedly "lost" multiple billions of dollars worth of the smaller insurrection/terrorism grade weaponry in the last several years.

[Hogeye]

Yes, the government (not we) is notoriously incompetent, and loses stuff. But the arms biz is ultra-regulated, and legal military munitions sales are licensed/controlled/approved by the US State.